Three Dark Crowns (Three Dark Crowns #1) - Kendare Blake Page 0,73
as if it had been drunk.
“What happened here?” Jules asks through a grimace. She steps gingerly around the dormant coals and floats her hand over the blackened part of the trunk. Then she wipes her fingers against her jacket, even though she never touched it.
“I think . . . ,” says Billy. “I think that even I feel something. A vibration, almost.”
“This place feels tired,” says Joseph. “As if it has been used up.”
“No,” says Jules. “It feels like what it is. Outside. It is not what the rest of these trees are. Not what the rest of this ground is.”
Prickles rise on the back of Arsinoe’s neck. It has never felt quite like this. As if Jules’s apprehension and Billy’s nerves are leaching into the air.
“Was it supposed to be here?” Joseph asks. “Is this where you saw it?”
“Yes.”
It was there, before the tree. Roaring as the branches burned behind it.
But the branches are not burned. And she has led them all this way for nothing.
“How long do we wait?” Billy asks. “Should we . . . whistle for it?”
“It is not a dog,” Arsinoe snaps. “It is not a pet. Just . . . a little longer. Please.”
She turns and searches the trees. There is no sound. No wind and no birds. It is as still and silent as it always is.
“Arsinoe,” Jules says gently. “We should not be here. This was a mistake.”
“No, it’s not,” Arsinoe insists.
Jules was not there. She was not the one joined to that tree, bleeding into it. She did not feel the change in the air. Madrigal said that a queen’s blood would really be worth something, and she was right. Arsinoe’s low magic is strong.
“The bear will come,” she murmurs. “It will come.”
She begins to walk north.
“Arsinoe?” Jules asks, and takes a step, but Billy puts out his arm.
“Give her a moment,” he says. But he follows her himself, keeping his distance as she searches.
When it arrives, it is not difficult to spot. The great brown bear is massive and trundling drowsily down the hillside. Its shoulders swing in dismal arcs as it tries to find its way down to her through the close-growing trees.
Arsinoe nearly shouts. But something holds her back. The bear does not look the way it did in her dream. With its claws dragging through the mud and its head lolling, it looks as if someone has pulled it up out of a ditch already dead and forced it back onto its rotting feet.
“It will recognize me,” Arsinoe whispers, and forces her legs to take a step. Then another.
She smells something decaying. The bear’s fur moves the way dead fur moves when it is disturbed by colonies of maggots and ants.
“Jules,” she whispers, and dares to look back. But Jules is too far away. She cannot see.
“Arsinoe, come away from it,” Billy says. “This is madness!”
But she cannot. She has called it, and it is hers. She holds out her hand.
At first, it does not seem to know that she is there. It keeps on lumbering, and to add to its list of wrongs, there is something the matter with its gait: its left shoulder slams down harder than its right. She sees streaks of red in its paw print. An overgrown claw has dug into its foot, as is common in very old or sick bears.
“Is it?” Billy asks. “Is it your familiar?”
“No,” she says, and the bear’s angry, bleary eyes finally meet hers.
“Run!” she shouts, and turns as the bear roars. The ground shakes beneath its weight when it comes after her.
They race down the hill, and time slows. Several years ago, when she and Jules were children, a farmer brought his dead hounds into the square to warn people of a rogue bear. A hunting party found and killed it a few days later. It had only been a common black, but those hounds had barely looked like hounds anymore, split from nose to tail by the common black’s claws. All these years later, Arsinoe remembers the way one dog’s jaw dangled by the tiniest piece of skin.
Mud from the bear kicks up around her shoulders. She is not going to make it.
Jules screams and runs toward her, but Joseph grasps her around the waist.
Good boy. He cannot let her risk herself. He has to look after her, the way Arsinoe always knew that he would.
Arsinoe’s foot slides in the mud, and she falls forward onto her face.